We have over 3,000 families and have a half hour between masses, sometimes less if the previous mass goes long. We have 3 priests and 5 EMs giving out communmion at each mass. If we just used the 3 priests I can’t imagine wht the mess in the parking lot will look like between masses.
That is what I am afraid would happen in many parishes. Now, also, your parish has three priests. What about a parish that only has 1 or 2? How would they handle the scheduling?
It isn’t just that, the average priest is in their late 50s or older. Administering holy communion to hundreds in both kinds with no help is an arduous task for someone older.
Maybe the quality of the music could be improved?
Reducing the length of the homily (which is part of the liturgy) can be accomplished by removing the frills and returning to sound Catholic catechesis on Scripture and Church Teaching!
(I thought more Catholics are “getting involved” (i.e. “actively participating”) than ever…)
EMHC is not a permanent office/ministry. When the need disappears, the position disappears.
Not according to the Vatican.
The EMs have always distrubuted the Eucharist (The Eucharistic Minister is always and only the priest) But I have never heard of a Catholic church distributing wine…the precious blood of Christ, yes…but never wine.
Vatican II didn’t change the Mass in fact Vatican II ended in 1965 and the Novus Ordo Mass was born in 1969 or 1970.
That is not the reason form Extraordinary Minsiters of Holy Communion…The reason for them is in extraordinary circumstances when there are not enough ordinary ministers of Holy Communion ie priests and deacons. The “participation of the Laity” angle is not church teaching.
Actually it blurs the line between the Sacramental priesthood vs the royal priesthood which becomes from protestantism…
There you go again…vatican II didn’t change the Mass and Nowhere in the documents of Vatican II is the “formats” of the Novus Ordo listed.
OK lets see. 2100 families. Most Parishes report approximately 30% of those registered actually show up for Mass. So using that lets say that 700 families show up. Average family size has shrunk but lets be generous for the sake of argument and say five per family and make it 3500 family members show up. Lets add an additional 1000 singles and we have a grand total of 4500. OK, vigil Mass is always popular so lets put 1,000 at that one. That leaves 3500 for the Sunday Masses. So lets schedule 7, 8:30 , 10, 12 and 2, not unreasonable at all. That puts 700 at each Mass… OK Distributing Holy Communion takes about 3 seconds per person, it really does, thats it, so figure 15 to 20 per minute,per Priest. At 15 per minute per Priest that works out to 900 per hour, but wait, we only have 700 there .So the actual time for one priest is would be about 45 minutes. 2 priests, around 20 minutes, 2 priests and a deacon about 10-15 minutes, which is not at all unreasonable.
It came out of Vatican II. THe Missal of Paul VI was a revised edition of Paul V.
EMCH’s have become common because of the shortage of priest.
Only for those who are confused in the first place. No EMCH I know, thinks they’re serving as some sort of mini-priest.
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy provides the norms for the Novus Ordo
Fundamentalist live in a world were the Mass is between themselves and God, not as community shared event. They hate themselves so they hate their neighbor and so they hate seeing their neighbor do anything beyond what they would do, and that is, sit in the pew and keep silent. Let the priest do everything. But then, thats only if they accept the priest being their style of priest.
Pius V, you mean.
That saddens me.
Just wait until “Communion services” become more frequent than Mass.
Really? Where is the “Communion in the hand” norm? Where is the EMHC norm? Where is the widely applied Communion under both kinds (see the examples provided in n. 55).
Let’s see, with our parish we have over 10,000 parishioners. Based on our census counts during mass, our attendance is about 45%. Our masses are at 5pm and 7pm on Saturday and 7am, 8:30am, 10am, 11:30am, 1pm, 5pm and 7pm Sunday. With the exception of the 7am Sunday mass, each mass has about 500 people at it and one priest and sometimes one deacon. As our church will only hold 500 people, we can not reduce the number of masses, therefore we have to use EMHC’s to be able to have mass, have everyone leave from the mass and everyone for the next mass to enter church in 1 1/2 hrs (in most cases). We do use far fewer EMHC’s at the 7am mass as there are fewer people attending.
So you are correcting Catholic90 for Ceasers inexact language? That doesn’t seem to right to me.
Amen! And we have that same amount. It would take another 1hr15 to get through that many people if it was only the priest. Yes, we should have EMHC. I can’t imagine not having them. I am going for a two hour training to be one myself.
As a Protestant, I had no issues with being at Church for up to three hours on Sunday. I go to daily Mass and I’m involved because I enjoy being at Church as much as possible. But I do see the need for the EMs in large parishes. Our Sunday Mass would be over 2 hrs long if we had only the priest giving communion. People are not going to want to sit for over 2 hours especially people with small children. Although I’m sure someone will come in here and claim that they have all their 8+ children sitting quietly during the TLM
Or what about people who work on Sunday, pilots, nurses, doctors? 
I have a learning disabled daughter who suffers from epilepsy. She would have difficulty at a Mass over 2 hours long. It would be a strain on her.So you want a Mass where the largest amount of time is distributing Holy Communion?